The Surprising Truth About the Worst Place to Store Medicines in Your Home
Medicines were created to help us stay healthy, get healthy, or prevent medical maladies that can interrupt our daily lives. When used correctly these medicines can truly work miracles. Just ask anyone who has needed an aspirin or two following a night on the town. See, they do work miracles.
But what is surprising is that most of us keep our over-the-counter medications and our prescription medications in the absolute worst place in our home. That place? The medicine cabinet in our bathrooms. I guess next they'll be telling us no one should keep gloves in the glove compartment of their car, right?
Let me clarify the medicine cabinet statement. Yes, you should keep any and all medications secure and sequestered from children. You'd think the medicine cabinet in the bathroom would be the perfect place. It's usually pretty high and out of reach. It usually has a door that closes securely. Its tiny shelves are built to hold small bottles.
Why the heck is it the worst place to store your medications?
It's because of something else that's in your bathroom. That something else is your shower. Your shower pumps a lot of warm moist air into the atmosphere in your bathroom. Over time the heat and moisture can affect the potency and reliability of your medications. That's over-the-counter meds and prescription stuff too.
Let me ask you this about aspirin. Does it hurt your stomach? Do you keep yours in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom? If you do, then the heat and moisture from the showers and sinks could cause the aspirin to break down into vinegar and salicylic acid. Those two things irritate your stomach. Who knew?
So, where should you store your meds?
A high cabinet or locking lower cabinet that children can not access is the best place. This is assuming those cabinets are not in another high heat high moisture place in your home. So maybe in your home office or near the kitchen but not too close to the stove or dishwasher.
Look, you pay a lot for those medications, you want them to work as described when used as directed, right? So take this cautionary step today for better health tomorrow.
Since we know you'd be snooping in our medicine cabinet anyway, we thought we'd let you know about a few other things you're likely to find when you come to visit.